Lock and Key(48)

“Why was she yelling at you?”

“Because I was playing guitar outside on the dorm steps one night. Cor’s not exactly pleasant when you get between her and her sleep, you know? ” I actually didn’t but nodded, anyway. “So there I was, first week of classes freshman year, strumming away on a nice late summer night, and suddenly this girl just opens up her window and lets me have it.”

“Really.”

“Oh, yeah. She just went ballistic. Kept saying it was so inconsiderate, keeping people up with my noise. That’s what she called it. Noise. I mean, here I was, thinking I was an artiste, you know?”He laughed again, shaking his head.

I said, “You’re awfully good-natured about it, considering. ”

“Yeah, well,” he said. “That was just that first night. I didn’t know her yet.”

I didn’t say anything, instead just looked down at my backpack strap, running it through my fingers.

“My point is,” Jamie continued, “not everything’s perfect, especially at the beginning. And it’s all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It’s when you feel it all the time and can’t do anything about it . . . that’s when you get into trouble.”

Over on the curb, the girls with the field-hockey sticks were laughing at something, their voices muffled by my window. “Like,” I said, “say, not applying to college, and then wishing you had?”

He smiled. “Okay, fine. So subtlety is not my strong suit. Do we have a deal or what?”

“This isn’t a deal,” I pointed out. “It’s just me agreeing to what you want.”

“Not true,” he replied. “You get something in return.”

“Right,” I said. “A chance. An opportunity I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“And something else, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Just wait,” he said, reaching forward to crank the engine. “You’ll see.”

“A fish?” I said. “Are you serious?”

“Totally!” Jamie grinned. “What more could you want?”

I figured it was best not to answer this, and instead turned my attention back to the round tank between us, which was filled with white koi swimming back and forth. In rows all around us were more tanks, also filled with fish I’d never heard of before: comets, shubunkin, mosquito fish, as well as many other colors of koi, some solid, some speckled with black or red.

“I’m going to go find someone to test my water, make sure it’s all balanced,” he said, pulling a small plastic container out of his jacket pocket. “Take your time, all right? Pick a good one.”

A good one, I thought, looking back down at the fish in the tank beneath me. Like you could tell with a glance, somehow judge their temperament or hardiness. I’d never had a fish—or any pet, for that matter—but from what I’d heard they could die at the drop of a hat, even when kept in a safe, clean tank. Who knew what could happen outside, in a pond open to the elements and everything else?

“Do you need help with the fish?”

I turned around, prepared to say no, only to be startled to see Heather Wainwright standing behind me. She had on jeans and a DONOVAN LANDSCAPING T-shirt, a sweater tied around her waist, and seemed equally surprised by the sight of me.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s Ruby, right?”

“Yeah. I’m, um, just looking.”

“That’s cool.” She stepped up to the tank, next to me, dropping a hand down into the water: as she did so, the fish immediately swam toward her, circling her fingers. She glanced up at me and said, “They get crazy when they think you’re going to feed them. They’re like begging dogs, practically. ”

“Really.”

“Yep.” She pulled her hand out and wiped it on her jeans. I had to admit, I was surprised to see she worked at a place like this. For some reason, I would have pegged her as the retail type, more at home in a mall. No, I realized a beat later. That was me. Weird. “The goldfish aren’t quite as aggressive. But the koi are prettier. So it’s a tradeoff.”

“My brother-in-law just built a pond,” I told her as she bent down and adjusted a valve on the side of the tank. “He’s obsessed with it.”

“They are pretty awesome,” she said. “How big did he go?”

“Big.” I glanced over at the greenhouses, where Jamie had headed. “He should be back soon. I’m supposed to be picking a fish.”

“Just one?”

“It’s my personal fish,” I told her, and she laughed. Never in a million years would I have imagined myself here, by a fish tank, with Heather Wainwright. Then again, I wasn’t supposed to be here with anyone, period. What I’d noticed, though, was that more and more lately, when I tried to picture where I did belong, I couldn’t. At first, it had been easy to place myself in my former life, sitting at a desk at Jackson, or in my old bedroom. But now it was like I was already losing my old life at the yellow house, without this one feeling real, either. I was just stuck somewhere in the middle, vague and undefined.

“So you’re friends with Nate,” Heather said after a moment, adjusting the valve again. “Right?”